@Janine, I'd second that. I don't do much public speaking and I don't think i'm that good at it, but one thing I have learned is that if you can get your audience to laugh you're more than half way there. And if you can poke fun at yourself, so much the better, you don't run the risk of offending anyone and people won't think you are "stuck up"...

Another point is that you should not have a slide that contains onlt bulleted text ... and if you do feel that you have to have such a slide as part of the handout, for goodness sake don't read it to the audience -- they will have finished it while you are still on the first line -- just say something like "Here's a list of things you should have in your emergency walrus polishing kit" and then move on to the next slide.

When I'm giving a talk I like to use slides containing images that remind me of the main flow -- but then I just talk to the slides so that it's new to the audience (and often to me :-)